Probable line-up:

Drums: Charlie Watts
Bass: Bill Wyman
Electric guitars: Keith Richards (incl. main riff) & Brian Jones
Lead vocals: Mick Jagger
Background vocals: Mick Jagger & Keith Richards
Piano: Ian Stewart
 

You're the kind of person you meet at certain dismal, dull affairs
Center of a crowd, talking much too loud, running up and down the stairs
Well it seems to me that you have seen too much in too few years
And though you've tried, you just can't hide, your eyes are edged with tears

You better stop, look around
Here it comes, here it comes, here it comes, here it comes
Here comes your 19th nervous breakdown

When you were a child you were treated kind but never brought up right
You were always spoiled with a thousand toys but still you cried all night
Your mother who neglected you owes a million dollars tax
And your father's still perfecting ways of making sealing wax

Oh who's to blame?
That girl's just insane
Well nothing I do don't seem to work
It only seems to make matters worse
So please

You were still in school when you had that fool who really messed your mind
And after that you turned your back on treating people kind
On our first trip I tried so hard to rearrange your mind
But after awhile I realized you were disarranging mine

Here it comes
Here comes your 19th nervous breakdown
 
 

TrackTalk

We had just done 5 weeks' hectic work in the States and I said, Dunno about you blokes, but I feel about ready for my 19th nervous breakdown. We seized on it at once as likely song title. Then Keith and I worked on the number at intervals during the rest of the tour.

Yeah (I played the lead guitar on that song).

I played a small-bodied Framus on that one. Not the red Framus bass that I used a lot onstage around that time but the one with the brown and yellow stripes across it that looked like a humbug. It was semi-acoustic. Andrew (Oldham) or Keith said something like, Why don't you do something at the end there, some kind of a lick that will fill up the space between the vocals and the band? I came up with that Bo Diddley thing really, I just bounced the string with the top of my finger on the pickup, and ran my finger down the string. That is what created that so-called "dive-bombing" sound. Can't do it on guitars I own now.

At the time Glyn Johns did a remix of the song which brought Mick's vocal out more, but Andrew (Oldham) rejected it.

We're not Bob Dylan, you know. It's not supposed to mean anything. It's just about a neurotic bird, that's all. I thought of the title first - it just sounded good.

It's alliterative.

Mick's always written a lot about (the other generation). A lot of the stuff Chuck Berry and early rock writers did was putting
down that other generation.

19th Nervous Breakdown... is not very good, really.

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